Pentagon

Iraq’s fractured army has begun to regroup and stage modest, localized attacks on the Islamic State militants who routed them last spring and summer, but they are unlikely to be ready to launch a major counteroffensive for many months, senior U.S. military officials say.

A woman who became ill in the Pentagon parking lot does not have Ebola, Virginia public health authorities said Friday, ending a daylong scare that forced the temporary quarantine of military members going to a Marine Corps ceremony in Washington.

The U.S.-led coalition has launched several airstrikes on Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) positions in Syria, mainly in and around the town of Kobani near Turkey, where Kurdish fighters captured a strategic hill and brought down the jihadists’ black flag, activists and a Kurdish official said Tuesday.

U.S. and coalition airstrikes have forced some Islamic State militants out of the Syrian border town of Kobani, but it may yet fall under the extremists’ control because air power alone cannot prevent it, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.

A Pentagon spokesman says the U.S. military is looking into allegations that civilians were killed in U.S. and allied airstrikes in Syria. But he said they have no “credible” reporting that such deaths occurred.

The U.S. military said Sunday it launched airstrikes around Haditha Dam in western Iraq, targeting Islamic State of Iraq and Syria insurgents there for the first time in a move to prevent the group from capturing the vital dam.